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Welcome to Day #5 of our 30 Day Summer Fun Challenge, where we’re giving you 30 days of simple, creative & most importantly memorable ideas to make this the most fun summer EVER for your family.

Pancakes. They’re not just for breakfast anymore. Here’s a fun way to shake up your family’s day. Make pancakes for dinner. But, don’t just make your regular old pancake recipe. Do something fun – shapes, colors, extras. I remember my Dad used to make Mickey Mouse pancakes for my brother and I. We loved it and it was a tradition that is a fond memory still today.

Shapes: For fun shaped pancakes, buy pancake molds at kitchen supply stores or old cookie cutters that can lay flat on a griddle. Fill them with batter and amaze your kids. Or use a condiment squirt bottle to “draw” pancake shapes on the griddle. You don’t need any special tools to make Mickey Mouse or bear shaped pancakes. Just make a larger circle and then two smaller circle pancakes and put them together on the plate to make your faces.

My son loves Star Wars so when we saw the new Star Wars pancake molds at Williams Sonoma, we ran out to get them. We added green food color to some of the batter to make the Yoda pancake shapes. (We liked these molds because they actually laid flat. We have bought molds before that weren’t completely flat and the batter leaks out to the side. Not cool.) How did we do?

Colors: Add food coloring to your pancake batter to make colored pancakes. Use a variety of colors and overlap them on the plate to make a rainbow. Depending on the shapes you are using, choose a matching food color to enhance the design. If you are going to add some whipped cream to your pancakes (this is incredibly delicious with pumpkin pancakes), you can also color the whip cream.

Extras: For the Piece de Resistance, add some fun “extras” to your pancakes like Hershey kisses for eyes, red hots for buttons, cherries, bananas, baked apples, and M&Ms. Go wild. Use a piece of bacon or sausage link for the mouth.

What’s great about cooking pancakes is that it’s a perfect meal for kids to help out. They can put the ingredients in the bowl, stir, and add the special ingredients. To help make your time in the kitchen together even more fun, get your kids their own cooking apron. My son loves to cook and we were frustrated that most of the kid-sized aprons were all girlie, so we went and found some boyish kids aprons that we know you’ll love too.